Blooming in Nature and in Fashion
BY LONG NGUYEN
Burberry Chief Creative Officer Riccardo Tisci has embarked on his continuing transformative projects at the brand on such a grand and Napoleonic scale that touches every aspect of the company from the initial deployment of a new logo to the massive and bold debut Kingdom show in September 2018 at the South London Mail Centre.
The spring live stream show as seen in the more arty squad Twitch broadcast in the woods in the South of England park was fashion’s equivalent as a performance art piece in the veins of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen commonly known as the Ring, a masterpiece opera performed over multiple days.
Tisci arrived at Burberry in 2018 at a moment of critical transition for this heritage British brand that had grown exponentially since the early aught propelling the brand into a major luxury company but had at the time also reached a plateau of growth, one roadblock that was immensely difficult to cross over.
At Burberry, it is expected that Tisci’s tenure will bring forth his own particular vision and will in due time remake and expand this British global brand with such a deep and rich history and heritage with a series new products and critically a new language that can be easily understood and amplified by the new audience and by default the next generation of luxury consumers. While the clarity of this mission is never in doubt, the question remains as to whether the designer can transform what this new generation sees as another brand with a great logo, a logo that is perhaps trendy now but one other logo in competition with others for attention and purchasing budget.
What kind of fashion and the accolades and narratives that wrapped around the new versions of trenches, dresses, suits, sportswear, bags, and footwear should the designer create for Burberry now after coming off his dozen years creating a brand new Givenchy brand?
Burberry has always been at the forefront of deploying and applying new technology to cater to its strategic plans as one of the first luxury brands to do streaming in 2010 and see-now-buy-now directly from the show a few seasons later. Prior to the live streaming of the spring show on Twitch directly from the Groundwork in the South of England – Burberry invited four guests, Erykah Badu, Bella Hadid, Steve Lacy, and Rosalia, to share frank conversations as a Twitch squad while viewers shared their thoughts directly onscreen.
Badu served as the chief squad moderator as the talk drifted into many personal realms including each of their experiences in the pandemic lockdown and more importantly how they met Tisci. “A dinner invitation leading to a real friendship,” Hadid said. “Just recently during the lockdown,” Lacy said that he is the newest addition to the designer circle of friends in London. “He came to one of my concerts,” said Rosalia. And Badu said that he had asked her to collaborate on a major project for her in 2015.
Eventually, the conversation drifted to Burberry and how each sees Tisci’s work.
“It’s all the discomfort so we can see and look forward to the possibilities. You know fertilizer is a poison but it makes the root uncomfortable and makes it grow.”
– Erykah Badu, on how she sees Tisci’s work for Burberry
Asked for one word to describe what Burberry is Bella Hadid responded – “It’s a classic and timeless brand. Riccardo embodies the radical cool side that elevated everything to this point. He is bringing the classics into the future.”
“He has an experimental approach with the high respect for the classics but always with an attitude pushing forward – past and future together,” Rosalia said. “He is blurring all these lines and his eyes are everywhere,” Lacy added.
Are these assessments from the members of the squad correct?
‘In Bloom’ – the titled given to this spring show – is indeed an ambitious manner to stage a fashion show as a real performance theater with a live band on a skeletal metal stage and a group of male ‘dancers’ all dressed in simple white pants, white polo or white tee-shirts going through various body movement routines in expressionless choreographed by the German visual artist Anne Imhof who specializes in endurance performances and installation works. The artist and musician Eliza Douglas performed a live set during the entire show, her strong operatic voice pierced the silence of the forest as she sang from a small steel platform surrounded by a troupe of men all wearing black suits who had accompanied the models as they strolled out into the woods.
It began with a thought of British summertime, embracing the elements with a trench coat on the beach mixing with the sand and the water. I envisioned the people of this space, like the lighthouse keeper, and a love affair between a mermaid and a shark, set against the ocean, then brought to land. The circle is hugely symbolic – regrowth, renewal, the circle of life. I was thinking about regeneration, about dynamic youth, about nature constantly recreating itself, always growing and evolving, always alive.
– Riccardo Tisci, on the genesis of the collection
The random physical movements of the performers with no emotional expressions on their faces – sometimes each moved individually, sometimes in pairs or triples touching each other without much of a sense of coordination or even purpose, and sometimes standing or reclining perfectly still – created tension and offered the digital viewers globally a sense of separation, of a break between the live singing, the performers and the models meandering through the woods to a central circular open area where they posed still in their new clothes.
Seeing this art-fashion performance show on the four screens at Twitch, a multimedia platform founded in 2011 now specializing in live interactive entertainment, gave me a new sense of perceiving a fashion show as the cameras were more focused on the performers than on the models walking – their moving images often regulated to the smaller bottom screens. It isn’t just the art symbol of natural regeneration or nature growing with freshwater but of fashion reborn in a new environment. “Water is what allowed nature to bloom. Everything is circular,” Tisci said of the importance of water in the brand’s history of using fabrics to repel the rain and fashion as a protection of the body. The hues of blues, water blue, permeates throughout the entire collection.
Art aside the renewal in fashion comes specifically in the physical clothes that are the final manifestations of the intended ideas. Tisci delivered on his promise on multiple grounds with a spring collection that started with the model wearing the khaki trench with a denim utility vest merged like an attached sleeveless vest paired with a denim shirt and pants tucked into thigh-high leather boots as the latest iteration of this icon as she was accompanied by four male models in black suits navigating around the branches – here on the critical importance of how to bring the brand most known signature product forward to a new era. In one outfit and perhaps also the sleeveless trench decorated with hand-painted figures, the new and the old merge in a way that a Gen Z audience can easily grasp.
The silver metallic evening dresses at the end reflect the more subdued mood, devoid of embellishments. But the silver metallic polo and black cutout leather pants or a black tunic with metallic pants represent a new way to dress for evening occasions now that formal events are nonexistent. The clothes felt lighter and more sporty in the mood. A deep blue nylon vinyl trench was representative of the water protection aspect of the brand’s DNA.
If the bunch of guys dressed in black suits as part of the show, they don’t seem to be part of the menswear gamut were utilitarian and sporty elements of fishermen clothes expressed in the range of jumpsuit in orange cotton or blue denim with the round shark swim warning sign embossed at the front, hooded parkas, and white print sheer tee-shirt paired over white dress shirt with metallic star trims. The light orange slim jacket relaxed fit pant was the only more formal outfit for men.
This was a relatively small show by Burberry standards where outings of over 130 looks were not uncommon. But to restrictions and pandemic regulations, this is a full show as any can be at this point. Sure there will be more merchandise available beyond what was seen as this is always the case.
“This is too high brow and the kids won’t understand” was one of the comments from one observer from the public who tuned in to Twitch and among those who commentaries rolled fast as the show progressed. This may not be true as art/fashion collaborations aren’t a new thing and in fact, have been the most successful enterprises for luxury brands. Also with instant access to information and so forth, kids these days are much more educated on ‘high brow’ matters than one can presume. Nevertheless, one should not underestimate the power of curiosity, of finding and of learning new and things unknown.
These kids will get and embrace Burberry’s intensive drive towards sustainability from the carbon-neutral emphasis of the show production, of the manufacturing process, and of the efforts to raise consciousness like the Burberry’s Regeneration Fund that donates and works closely with organizations such as Groundwork to foster conservation efforts and greater individual connections to nature in England. The show location will benefit from a tree growing efforts in the coming months.
The kids nowadays purchase products from companies whose social values align with theirs – these embedded values with young people must also entrench the new trench coats with contrast tails of denim, the new Pocket Bag, and surely many manifestations of Arthur sneakers and monograms anoraks. As Tisci said of him and the brand ethos – “One vision, one-story – Burberry’s identity and my own creativity reaffirming the codes of Burberry – my codes of Burberry, our DNA.”